First of all name and location

Oh and try to be gramatically correct to save me editing time =)

LOL

How long have you been playing Utopia?

Since you dragged me there in beta ;)

Me? So you blame me for inflicting you on the Utopian world?

yes, its all your fault.... you got me addicted and abandonded me ;(

U r not capitalizing... frowns

oh sorry, i kinda never do

Bad grammar =(

lol.... Deal with it Mr. Webzine

CAPITALIZE I HATE YOU!

no ;) its a wink. see the little comma is winking at you

Ok, Wait til u see the porn pics with your head on it in the interview then =P

nooooooooo.... u r an evil, evil tard

BAH AND U WANT TO DESIGN STUFF PROFESSIONALLY? YOU CAN'T EVEN CAPITALIZE!

well, artists dont need to worry bout the small stuff.... we leave that to others ;)

You wait til I edit this interview little missy =P

uh huh

Anyway.... so tell us a little about the betas...

betas were confusing.... i didnt understand alot.... especially military units

Why so?

i had tons of channeling science, which at the time produced more runes or was that schools that produced more runes? anyway... i was a giant rune farm ;) and i used to send my beasts out thinking they'd back up the swordsmen with defense in battle.... i had an interesting beta

So, you were hideously bad then =)

my regent gangbanged me and i had to call the Rogue Alliance in, remember?

You asked for help like 087454307430954078543 times so not that one specifically

she was a vicious notorious power hungry multi

Oh yah... her name slips my mind though...

and didnt like that i disagreed with her in the forums, so when I attacked, with my beasts one night, i got banged. her name was Kestrel/Avalon. bunch of Kestrel/Avalon type names

Oh yah... I remember that.... Now a lot of people may not be familiar with you and after reading about your beta, they may be wondering why I'm interviewing you. Tell everyone your accomplishments in Utopia...

accomplishments? I dont think I have any really

Ok.... lets not play modest =P How many top 100 finishes do you have.....

I've finished top 100 since round 3

Are you top 100 right now?

yes top 100 right now

What are the names you've played under since round 3?

round 3 Venomous Vixens round 4 Shagadelica round 5 Venus Flytrap round 6 Chariot of Venus round 7 *******************

Now how did you go from the worst player on Earth in the betas to a 5 straight round top 100 player since round 3?

Well, I guess I improved a bit in round 1 when I got a better understanding of military units and builds, etc. I forgot to select race that round and ended up a humie, was very disappointed but that... but I did ok.

How did you do round 2?

I got a better understanding of how important a "clean" build is in round 2. I did a bit better... struggled as a faery tho and round 3, i chose elf. elves rocked then, they were awesome and i happened to have a great round. I got totally multied to death in the last week of the game, and still finished very well. over 4000 acres of arson

How did your kingdom do in rounds 1-3?

round 1 we were top 10 on our island. round 2, we were 3rd in the world, that was an amazing improvement. round 3 we finished 2nd in the world, but that had alot to do with kangas kd and hydras kd getting banged

Why did they kingdom improve so much?

most people there were average players, original players as far as i know. we had a good regent in round 2 *wink*. he never tolerated an attack on us.

Ya... yes you were regent for most of that round weren't you?

always made a point to make a retal even if he couldnt get thru.. no i was not ;) Round 1 I was regent for a bit, then when my regent got into the war of all wars, the Gaia vs. Arcadia war, I convinced him to take regency for the bonuses and I was happy to see him keep regency b/c he was a very good player... one of the all time greats I think... you may have heard of him

Heavy Orc was very talented and often under rated...

noooooooo

So they broke up your kingdom after round 3 and you got a new kingdom..

Heavy was regent part of round 2 I believe at the end. yup. matter of fact, round 2 we had a few regents if i remember. Heavy, that guy Archfiend, and even Fluffy. remember Fluffy the newbie bashing dwarf? or was it puffy? LOL

Yes, real nice guy, but was regent of the #3 kingdom in the world 1.2 million and hitting 80k provinces every day. Didn't look good

yup, and even after we talked to him about it more than once, he still did it. i could never understand that

Yes I remember logging in one day and being regent because everyone overthrew Fluffy on the fly =)

yup ;) lol... oh i miss those days... the game was incredibly fun then

Do you think the game is no longer as fun as it was in the early rounds?

definitely not, probably a combination of things... me being jaded, and everyone focusing so much on numbers, and defense. nobody wants to get hit, defenses have gone thru the roof

Well nobody ever wanted to get hit =)

its alot different now tho, hits are more damaging. especially during war. a guy gets clocked 3x during a war, he's lost a ton of land. that puts your economy in a tailspin

well that is true... there were no 3k acre hits in round 2 =)

yup. war is very hard to recover from if you're on the losing end. and with the current war system, and the amount of people with friends on icq, war is an open invitation to a gang bang

One thing a lot of people are probably wondering is how you've managed to run off 5 consecutive top 100 rounds

in answer to your last question... addiction, lol. solid defense. solid science (except when i get banged by multis). well rounded instead of focusing on one aspect of the game, i try to balance them all. you can never be perfect, but even a military province needs decent thieves and wizards to survive

Be a little more concrete.. defense, science, and well rounded doesn't tell people enough about what to do

i try to keep my build as CLEAN and simple as possible thats where i start

what do you mean by clean?

i dont have 1% of anything or i dont have 3% of anything. i max out what i have. maximize the buildings you need, and dont bother with the rest alot depends on race tho, I prefer a race with a good defense. I have nightmares from round 5 when i got hit twice as an avian :(

Ok so you maximize your buildings by being very specific...what about gaining land? Give people some tips in that area?

well, the best method of hunting land is to keep a target list. You get guys who are within your acre range (rounds past it was nw range) and you take note of their current fame/nw/land. and you keep a list of them (preferrably dwarves and humans) on your desktop. when you're ready to hunt, you whip out the list and you start pulling up kingdom screens. if the fame has changed from the day before, you do a crystal eye. if your target has attacked within a reasonable amount of time (every race is different) you do a milspy/survey. sometimes, i do the milspy and survey when i find them just to get a feel for their build in general. I save every single htm file until the round is over

Really? All of them?

the rest is numbers... *do i have enuf to break him?* yup, i have a folder on my desktop. utopia notes. i save my files like so... "22-8 ***********.htm, **************spy.htm, etc"

Be very honest here... I know it takes a lot of time to be top 100.. how much time per day do you spend on Utopia including ICQ and chat about it, reading forums, playing, building troops, etc

this round, not that much... i'm coasting and trying to get alot of my guys above a million, so i login, build/train send aid out to my current pet and logout, this round, i'm not nearly as dedicated to it. yup, especially when i was under multi attack last round.

Ya but you worked? Were you on from work too?

yes i was... i would login, train/build and pop out... alot of people do that ;) i would login 15 times a day easy. when i was more active and involved, i'd be on icq constantly. still am on icq alot ;)

Wow.. I know.. I used to do it too =)

well, i dont work now, hehe and amazingly i spend less time in Utopia than when I did work.

Do you see yourself continuing to play Utopia next round?

I'm thinking about it... I dont know. The game is in a bad state of affairs right now if you ask me.

You really don't enjoy it?

I do enjoy it, I enjoy the social aspect of it, but the game itself has alot of things that just arent working right

Give us some examples

well, for example war. war is based on nw. if a kingdom is at least 80% of your nw you can declare... the problem with that is I personally am about 1/4 of my kingdoms networth. a kingdom with a better balance looks to declare on us, neutralize me by sinking and they bang the crap out of the smaller guys. there is no torching in war, so they get decent gains from guys half their size while i sit there exposed, boatless and helpless. its very frustrating to see that happen, over and over. you are actually penalized for being a good player in a small kingdom there is something severly wrong with that. then of course, there are 3 war slots so the minute you declare on someone, they call their friends and say "hey, help". so you get declared on by another kigndom while you're already engaged in a war, and possibly declared on a second kingdom if your target kingdom had an alliance connection or alot of friends.

One common strat I hear people complaining about is that a crew of multi provinces comes in and sinks all of a kingdoms boats and then the multis owners then declare war.

Yes, that has happened to more than one person I know multis still run rampant throughout the game. After 7 full rounds of this game, its a bit disappointing that Mehul has not properly addressed and fixed the problem. he does his multi sweeps, but its not enough. And although multis are limited in the damage they can do, they can still harrass people. There seem to be just as many multis now as there ever were. A few weeks back, I got poked by a good sized avian in one of those "super kingdoms". I wont mention the name. He failed 5 thief attempts, and immediately after him, 5 halfling provinces no more than 100k nw tried several times to poke me. Now... this guy is in a top 5 kingdom. I would find it very hard to believe that his friends are all 50 to 100k halfers. His friends are most likely guys his size, in kingdoms like his

Yah, it screams multi..

Now that was just poking, I've had no severe damage done to me this round, but, I know quite a few people who are having a hard time with multis. Its ridiculous that this continues to happen after 7 rounds.

I agree that it is

so i guess i'm a bit jaded, but there is a part of me that hopes Mehul will try to fix this in gameplay

Here are a couple of suggestions that Mehul has floated for the next two rounds.. First off "The Gold Server" Good or bad idea?

excellent idea. take the top 750 kingdoms and put them on a seperate server. well, it would eliminate a lot of this *island 47* multi type activity. I also think he should have only 1 war slot. and no grabs or harmful ops outside of war. 1 kingdom vs 1 kingdom, no outsiders sinking, casting, attacking. a fair fight

What about the idea of getting rid of individual NW...

i dont understand why he'd want to do that, makes no sense to me at all

He said it would encourage more teamplay

cant even grasp where that idea came from, I dont think he's at all in touch with his players. arch... BULLSH*T. team play my @ss.. *excuse my language*...thats not how you encourage team play

You don't think it would encourage teamplay?

no i dont...i dont think it will make a lick of difference in how a kingdom plays a round. players with high nw are for the most part the most experienced players in the game. people look up to that and are inspired by it. removing that would demoralize kingdoms who have only 1 or 2 good players. When i was running top 5 last round, my entire kingdom played better. they were more aggressive, more focused, and I honestly believe they were inspired to do better because they knew people were watching. Does that sound nuts?

Nope... You know you are not a well known player compared to a lot of people despite being the only player I know of besides Tezu to run off 5 straight top 100 rounds.. why do you think that is?

i dunno, i dont really have a forum presence, that might be part of it. I rarely post there, and when I do, I very rarely post under an identifiable nick

With all the time you spend around the game, why don't you post in the Utopia Forums more?

I dont like notoriety or attention. Look at what its done to some of the top players. Gont and Sauron. Attention = harrassment. Draw attention to yourself and you're asking for thieves up your hiney.

You know you are probably the most accomplished female player in the game and probably are one of the top 10 players of all time and no one has heard of you =)

Am I really the only player you know to have 5 straight top 100 finishes? LOL - well, my popularity increased a wee bit when I was an UDNO regent and last round when I was top 5, i added a full 150 names to my icq list because people wanted to meet me And the FUNNY thing was half of the people I know, didnt realize it was me in that #1 slot! I had people adding me left and right, I think my number was being passed around and some of the people who added me, were people who had lost me on their list and they were like "thats you?" it was a fun round for me until i got multied i had to go green because i could not tolerate logging in every hour to make sure i had 8 peasants so i went into vacation mode for a week, and visited some friends forgot about utopia for a while ;)

and still finished top 100 =)

ya, 60th ;) i came out of protection with 1500 peasants and my income was -68k an hour i think... it was nuts

-68k an hour?

ya, i still had all my military but not enough peasants to generate income to pay them my income before expenses was liek 8k or something ridiculously bad

Lol that is insane =)

yup, very disheartening to watch your province get torn to shreds by a clear and obvious multi he logged in every day at 4am my time worked his way through 8 identical fae thief/mage provinces

Did you turn the multi in to Mehul?

i didnt bother, because i've turned multis in before and nothing was done. i think someone in my kingdom reported him and nothing was done or they are clearly evading the multi system

That is really disapointing... to have clear multis ravaging you and report it and nothing happens

yup, and its not the first time with a multi that is hopelessly obvious one after the other. one right after the other, always between 4 and 5am. doh, thats a multi. thats why i say Mehul is not addressing the situation properly. he needs to fix the situation in game play by eliminating the possibility of outsiders interference in wars, etc. needs to get allharmful ops, including boat sinkings into war only with only one war slot.

Would you like to see a shuffle next round?

Do you realize how many provinces would not exist next round if he did that? i'd rather see gold server than shuffle. if there was a shuffle, i'd flat out quit. dont want to deal with "i'm so and so and i want to be regent" and newbies and teaching 24 new people how to play dont have the time or patience for it.

The real nightmare would be having no individual NW and a reshuffle

arent u going to ask what my favorite utopian memory is or my favorite moment?

What is your favorite Utopian memory?

round 1 your post in our forums "I will die soon" hehe i should have saved that page ;) looking back on that now, it is one of the funniest and most endearing things u ever did

Oh, that was right before I challenged all of island 1 single handedly I think =)

yes.... LOL

And begged the leader of the entire island alliance to put me on their "Death List"

it was very melodramatic post

And then started kicking his kingdom's @ss =)

and i rebuilt you :) and then CD arsoned u which i still dont think he acknowledges

bunch o multis actually

ya it was vicious and that was before mills

Ya I remember... I built a lot of shipyards so I could keep hitting them... it was still good round.... Any shout outs or anything u want to promote

shout out to my friends, and there are so many so if I forget anyone, forgive me... Larroke, Dready, Fatty, Leper, my wonderful kingdom, HH, Byakko, Malkieri and Eva, Helena, Horus, and my favorite thief, Rebelli0n :)

- Archfiend (02-May-2000) - http://www.brassknuckles.net